Trilogy of Lust 2: Portrait of a Sex Killer (1995) shouldn't be one of my favorites but it is.

I just love how insane it is and I feel like it's pushing boundaries. I certainly don't think it's playing things safe by any stretch so I really admire that. Reviews for it seem less than favorable but dammit I love it. The very end is odd and a lot of it is brutal but they were completely fearless in going to some extremely dark places. So much horror feels safe now especially if you gorged yourself on it. Clive Barker said the same thing recently when I saw him speak at Spooky Empire. Thus, I have to say a film like this should be applauded because it's unique and totally out there. The lead actress Julie Lee is also wonderful and so brave to do something like this (she was great in the first part as well). I know there are German releases of this (you rule, Germany) but dang it someone give this a nice English-subtitled Blu-ray with extras please. We don't deserve this but we need it for our dark little souls.

Fatal Love (1993) delivers CAT III goodness.

Hong Kong gave the world a glorious gift in the form of its notorious CAT III films but this one especially stood out to me. There are plenty of other amazing titles in this wonderfully nasty den of cinema, which I'm sure are arguably much better (Diary of a Serial Killer comes to mind... so wrong in every way or the infamous Ebola Syndrome of course) yet I have to hold up Fatal Love. It's quite twisted and I didn't see the end coming although I should have but the story pulled me in. Ellen Chan should have gotten an Oscar. Alright, maybe that's a bit much but she did a killer job in this as a cop on the trail of a really sick bastard. There are some fun twists in the story and my enjoyment of the film has nothing to do with the beautiful leading lady. Nope, nothing at all. You believe me right? Hello? I'm talking to myself again, aren't I? It's crazy they got away with making films like these. Crazy awesome.

I'm reminded of one eternal truth: I need to watch more CAT III. If you haven't seen the documentary Category III: The Untold Story of Hong Kong Exploitation Cinema, I highly recommend that as well. Naked Killer, Raped By an Angel aka Naked Killer 2, Dr. Lamb, Bloody Beast, Fatal Passion, The Untold Story, Taxi Hunter, The Other Side of Dolls, The Rapist, Trilogy of Lust, The Peeping Tom, etc. What a dark demented rabbit hole. You'll love it.

Bio-Zombie (1998) is really funny.

You can tell these guys love movies, and their film is quite clever like when they pull the split screen trick or the amusing, unique opening credits. Clearly, they didn't have much money, and the FX leave a bit to be desired, but the banter between the two leads more than makes up for that. They're lowly video store clerks... pirated crappy videos at that as one customer complains about but their schemes and conversations never fail to entertain. I wouldn't call it horror even though there are some zombies and at least one tragic kill, but it's definitely an effective comedy. I enjoyed it immensely. I haven't seen many Hong Kong zombie films either so I like that unique angle too. It all takes place in a pretty cramped shopping mall but obviously such a location isn't foreign to amazing zombie films. The fate of several characters is actually surprising, and you do get some different zombie scenarios too like a prelude to the recent popular zombie love story shenanigans.